


You're my river running high, Run deep, Run wild

by DigitalMeowMix



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Growing Up, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Long-Distance Friendship, Memories, Nature, Post-Canon, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:23:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7374307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DigitalMeowMix/pseuds/DigitalMeowMix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chihiro leaves the bathhouse but she remembers the lessons she learned and most of all she remembers Haku as she grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're my river running high, Run deep, Run wild

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluedreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/gifts).



Chihiro didn't look back. She put one foot in front of the other and kept her eyes on her father's back. But she remembered.

She went to her new school and found it was mostly like the old one. Despite being the new kid she made a few new friends almost right away, but she still wrote letters to her old friends and talked to them on the phone, and she made plans to visit them over the summer. Her new room in the new house was bigger, although the wallpaper was an ugly grey, not like the warm pink of her old bedroom, which she still expected to see whenever she opened her eyes in the morning. Dad helped her paint the walls and asked her what color she wanted, and she said blue. At night, as she drifted off to sleep, she dreamt the blue walls were washing over her like river currents. She dreamed of the shining scales of a great dragon and a calm, regal voice saying her name, and a warm hand clasping her own, solid and real.

 

Her family had never been very religious. They went to the local shrine on New Year's and they had erected a family shrine for a while after her grandmother had died when she had been very young, but her parents were very modern people and she had been raised a modern girl. So, when went she through a six-month period obsessed with Shintoism, reading books from the library and pointing out every roadside shrine they passed in the car, her parents were confused but tolerant. She found it fascinating that everything in life had a spirit, and she spent hours under the covers at night trying to remember the way all the spirits at the bathhouse had looked so she could identify them in her books, as she had never asked them to their faces at the time. It had seemed rude, and some had been unfriendly. She especially loved all the nature spirits; she read about the fearsome Raijin and Fujin and the slimy Kappa and was thankful that other than the polluted river spirit and No Face, she had never encountered anything that scary in her time at the bathhouse. 

She looked in every book she could find, and even local folklore from her home town on her father's computer, but she never found any information about the spirit of the Kohaku River. She thought _that's a shame_ and built a small shrine in her room. She dug the small shoe she'd worn the day she first met Haku out of the back of her closet, amazed that her feet had ever been that small, and put it under a drawing of a dragon, which she was becoming very skilled at drawing, and a stick of incense and flowers from her mother's garden. She said goodnight to it every night as she fell asleep.

 

Her parents let her get a dog. She named it Mochi, a childish name but it fit. He was a fat little Shiba Inu with a loud, clear bark and she walked him along the forest paths near her house every day. When Mochi was two, he came down with a bad infection. Her parents took him to the vet and she sat in the waiting room sobbing, convinced her very first pet and constant companion was going to die. The vet said he would be fine, but he needed to take medication every day for a month, and it needed to be hand fed to ensure he took it. Mochi hated it, he whined and flailed and snarled, and it was agonizing. She wished he understood that they were trying to help, but he was an animal in pain. She watched her father try to coax the dog to open his mouth for what seemed like hours but was usually only about fifteen minutes of swearing and wrestling. 

One evening after dinner she watched Mochi get his medicine and it was really bad that time, he growled, teeth bared and snapping, her sweet dog become a vicious beast. Her father left the room to go get his thick leather work gloves to protect himself, and she crawled slowly towards Mochi, lying on the carpet. She gathered her courage as Mochi cowered. Then she struck quickly, holding onto the scruff of his neck and firmly opening his mouth as he made an angry growl from the back of his throat, just barely missing his sharp little teeth as she stuck the pill on his tongue. Mochi swallowed in spite of himself. Her mother rushed in at the noise and tugged her away, yelling at her, "That was dangerous and foolish." But Chihiro knows how to deal with wildness, and she knows that loving something enough to fight for it, even when she's fighting against it, is powerful. Besides, a flailing, bloody dragon is much scarier than a little dog.

 

That magical onigiri Haku had given her had been the best thing she had ever tasted. They had sat there under the warm sun, the smell of all those flowers tickling her nose, and she had cried for a long time as he rubbed her back. He had looked to be about her age, but he was so calm and composed. When he told her everything would be alright, she believed him; it had been the first time she had felt safe. She had remembered watching her mother make onigiri at home and it should have made her cry harder, remembering her parents, but it had just made her more determined to save them. Afterwards, the feeling of warmth and safety returned every time she ate onigiri and she pestered her mother to make it for her bento nearly every day. The first time a male classmate offered her one of his at lunch, she sputtered and blushed so red he asked her if she needed to go to the nurse.

 

Sometimes as she had worked, scrubbing and sweeping and hauling tubs of water, Haku had visited her, and if they were alone they would talk. Well, she would talk. She would try to recite everything she could remember from her life in her head as she worked because Haku said it would help bind her to the world of the living, just like her name. But as the days working at the bathhouse continued, reciting had gotten harder: my name is Chihiro, l am ten years old, I have a mom and dad, I use to live in... Where had she lived? What city? What region? Hadn't she always lived in the bathhouse? What did her parents' faces look like? They didn't really look like pigs, so what did they look like? The memories had begun slipping away, faster and faster. 

On the day she'd had the stray thought that she no longer remembered the kanji for her name, she had been carrying a large tub of hot water, and had dropped it on her foot in shock, soaking the front of her uniform and burning her legs. She had started to cry as the frogs scolded her and chased her off the bathhouse floor before she made a bigger mess. She had been turning a corner, still sniffling, when Haku had appeared. He had sat her down and helped her dry off, and as he applied a salve to her burned legs he distracted her from the stinging by helping her recite her name over and over, enunciating the syllables. By the time the salve had taken effect, she'd felt more sturdy than she had in days. After she returned to her world, when she introduced herself to her new classmates, she took great care in writing her name on the blackboard. First impressions are important and she knows just how powerful names can be, and how scary it is not to know yourself.

 

In high school, she was expected to join a club. The first week of school they had a club fair and she eagerly visited every booth, enthralled by the variety of choices and craving a reinvention. She had enjoyed some sports in middle school, so girls' tennis? Or flower arrangement? She considered the cooking club for a while, sampling their little cakes and talking to the girl behind the desk. A stall caught her eye: PROTECT JAPAN’S ECOSYSTEM, the sign proclaims in bright green letters. There are pictures of rice paddies and hot springs and mountains. She wandered over to the booth and a boy in glasses she recognized from class gave her a pamphlet. The club was run by the science teacher and they took weekly trips into a nearby park to clear away litter, they ran the school recycling drive, they signed petitions to the government on environmental issues. She took a pamphlet and that night over dinner she recited the information she'd read. _Mom, did you know that the Atlantic bluefin tuna is being overfished? Dad, it's horrible, the air pollution in cities is so bad you can't see the horizon on cloudy days._ She made the poor decision to watch The Cove and had nightmares for weeks. 

A few months later, the club got the news that a local park with a lovely pond was going to be bulldozed to make way for a shopping center. She signed the petition that was handed around but she knew it wasn't enough, so when a few of the most dedicated club members began to whisper about a sit-in protest, she listened. That Friday, she packed a bag with supplies and told her mother she was spending the weekend at a friend's. She walked to the park with several other club members. Someone brought sleeping bags and she brought art supplies. As the sun set, she painted a picture on poster board of a sleek blue dragon, not very large, just large enough to be the deity of a pond. She hammered it to a nearby tree and joined the others around a fire eating hotdogs. Two hours later, the cops came around after noticing the smoke and they kicked them out for loitering and fire safety violations. But they left the poster. Underneath the dragon, in a large blue font, are the words PROTECT THE SPIRIT OF NATURE.

 

She got a job at a local convenience store the spring of her second year of high school. Three times a week, before school, she woke before dawn and rode her bike two blocks to a small store between a flower shop and a pet store. She was hired in a janitorial position, telling the boss, Mrs. Akira, she had lots of experience cleaning at home, and she's not afraid of hard work. The owner has a son about her age. Sometimes boys remind her of Haku, their voices, or their eyes, their lean bodies, but not that boy. Tanaka was loud and immature but still friendly, hanging around the store most days before and after school, and he was always in trouble. His mother scolded him constantly about his poor grades and his uniform being dirty and the fact that he was always trailing dirt in onto the floor and that "Poor Chihiro has to clean up after you, you inconsiderate brat." She was embarrassed to be mentioned in her tirades, especially when Tanaka was told to run errands for his mother and he whines that she should do it, she's the employee. He got a smack on the back of the head for that. After that incident, she found herself being less tolerant of his attitude: some people are made to do the dirty work, like her and Haku, and others are more lucky than they know, and they are spared. Tanaka didn't have an evil witch holding horrible consequences over his head, just a well-meaning mother. She fought with her own parents sometimes, but she loved them. Some people don't have parents at all. She doesn't think river spirits do.

 

The summer she turned eighteen, she went on a solo trip to the coast for a week. She went to the coastline a few miles from her old house, where her parents had frequently taken her on vacation. She figured she’d stop into her hometown and visit her old friends on the way. When she got there, the sun was just beginning to set, and all but a few beachgoers had packed up and left. She walked along the shore and peered into the distance, imagining she could almost see the spirit train rolling through the waves on its way to Swamp Bottom and Zeniba’s house. She wondered if No Face was still there helping her. As the sun began to settle down past the horizon, she was alone. She took off her sandals and waded into the waves, wincing as the cold seawater hit her legs, longer now and much less dirty and scuffed than when she was a child.

She heard a sound behind her, like a large rock being thrown into the sea, and felt a splash of water on the back of her knees. She turned around, surprised, expecting to see a fish nipping at her legs after splashing its way over to her, or perhaps a seagull.

Haku stood there, looking the same but also somehow older. He was wearing different clothes than she remembered him wearing at the bathhouse, the fabric of his clothing seeming to shimmer like the pearlescent inside of a seashell and his hair a bit longer, now worn in a ponytail. He was smiling at her, but he didn't speak. She was in his arms before she could even wonder how he was there, and if he would even be solid. They were in the human world and he was a spirit, after all. 

"Haku, you're here! How are you here?" she stuttered, through tears. "I thought I would never see you again!"

"When I finally returned this world, the old hag gave me a new body of water to protect. She said this beach needed a guardian and since it was close to my old river where we first met, I took the job."

"She can do that? And you can change places?" She couldn't help being curious about the circumstances, even though she was overwhelmed at seeing him again.

"Of course! Don't you know all rivers lead to the ocean? All of the nature spirits are connected. And besides, I promised you we would meet again didn't I?"

She laughed and hugged him harder. That night, she stayed on the beach under the stars, talking and laughing with her old friend. He listening intently as she told him all about her life, her school and her friends and her parents, even though he must have been bored by her mundane human stories. She asked for news about the bathhouse and Zeniba and No Face and was pleased to hear the bathhouse was the same hectic bustle of activity as ever, and that No Face still helped weave magical talismans and clothing with Zeniba, and protected her cottage from intruders. And that the witch sisters still bickered endlessly. She felt a sting of nostalgia in her gut, but felt herself drift off to sleep with the sound of Haku’s calm voice.

 

When she woke up, she was alone. She didn't cry, just gathered her things, and with one last wave and bow at the sea, she headed home. 

 

Two years later, she met her husband at university. They took the same History of Agriculture class. He was hardworking and smart but shy. They partnered for a project on the effects of pesticides on rural children and despite the grim subject she found herself falling for him. They married after graduation and moved to the countryside, near her parents. When they had their first child a year later, a boy with serious eyes and a full head of silky hair, she knew his name as soon as she held him.

 

She was at the beach, her favorite beach, with her family, she watched her six-year-old son play in the waves, holding his father's hand tight. Suddenly, a large wave crashed into them both. She saw her husband lose his grip on her son's hand with a shout and she saw her son go under. She was down the beach to the water in seconds, but it took twenty for her son to surface. She and her husband both grabbed for him at the same time and he was sobbing ,sea water up his nose and in his eyes, snot running down his chin. But he was fine. She knew it was not luck that saved him. 

"Thank you," she sobbed as she clutched his small body to hers. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." 

"Why 'thank you' momma?" her son sputtered, once he had caught his breath. 

"I'll tell you later honey," she cooed. "Now let's dry you off, ok? Come on, Haku, let's go sit on the towel for a bit." 

He took her hand and her husband's and they all shakily returned to the safety of the blanket.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "I follow rivers" by Lykki Li
> 
> Inspired by Follower of Rivers by AcrosticaCrumpet
> 
>  
> 
> I love this movie, its one of my all time favorites. I even cosplayed a Chihiro a few years ago at a con. So I was excited and honored to write this fic.


End file.
